It’s a bit of a high wire act this morning, following the people’s business in both the House and Senate. But here’s how we are going to try and work things so that we can all follow along together.
Emptywheel will be liveblogging the House Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing this morning with testimony scheduled from David Addington, Christopher Schroeder and John Yoo. That hearing is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am ET. MSNBC has a brief rundown on potential testimony. But for some meaty analysis, Marty got his hands on the Yoo prepared remarks already. It looks like C-Span3 will be airing the hearing live.
Meanwhile, I’ll be keeping an eye on the Senate floor, where business will open this morning at 9:30 am ET for continuation of the 30 hours of debate on the FISA bill. There is no schedule in terms of who will be speaking on the floor — or if anyone will be — so we are going to play it by ear in watching this one together. Most likely a vote on the bill itself will occur sometime this evening but, again, nothing is set as yet.
For more analysis on the FISA bill, David Kris summed up his series here, and it is well worth a read. And Pat Lang had a guest post on some potential tech background on the questions involved with SIGINT that I found an intriguing read, but would love some thoughts from the techies in the audience on this. I thought this comment from Andy Vance was particularly astute, though, as to why this fight matters:
The objection isn’t about Geo. Bush monitoring my calls. It’s that 1) Geo. Bush dismantled FISA by executive fiat – part of a broader effort by this administration to dismantle Congress’ constitutional role – and 2) the new regime was implemented with zero – zero – oversight.
It’s going to be a bit of a balancing act today, so everyone hang on to your seats, grab another cuppa coffee and keep the popcorn at the ready…
UPDATE: Emptywheel has the liveblog thread up and running for HJC.
(H/T to reader lemma for forwarding the link to Pat Lang’s guest poster. Much appreciated.)
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